“On us.” Cam stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. He appeared to have utterly dumped his coat, and Rafe prayed he hadn’t actually tossed it out. The T-shirt Cam had been given was just the tiniest bit too small. “You walked out on us.” Rafe saw Laura soften for the tiniest moment, and then her stubbornness set back in. “I was fired, Rafe. As I didn’t have a real relationship with anyone outside of work, I didn’t think I had to leave a forwarding address. And you should get your hand off me, you’re hurting me.”
“Hey!” Holly said.
“Put the fishing pole down, Holly.” Laura sighed as she looked over Rafe’s shoulder.
Rafe turned to see the redhead with a fishing pole in her hand, apparently ready to defend her friend. Rafe released Laura’s arm.
“I don’t think that would have done a lot of damage.” Laura smiled at the two women who had been coming to her rescue.
Holly shrugged as she reset the fishing pole. “Next time you get assaulted, make sure it happens deeper in sporting goods. Then I could have picked up a hockey stick or a baseball bat.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Laura promised. “I’ll see you two tonight. Holly, you’re going, right?”
“Oh, yes, Stella’s is serving dessert. And Hal has come up with something called venison tapas. I have no idea what it means, but Zane made the sheriff promise to give it a try.” Holly pointed a thumb back towards Nell. “Nell and Henry are protesting.”
“Excellent. See you there.” Laura started down the stairs.
“Laura, we’re not done here.” He wasn’t about to come all this way only to be dismissed.
“I told you, I’m going home to change. I’ll be at the Big Game Dinner this evening. It’s going to be on the fairgrounds. We can talk there.”
“If you run, I’ll come after you.”
She stopped halfway down the stairs and turned those blue eyes on him. “Why would I run? This is my home.”
“You left your last home.”
“DC was never my home. It was just a stop on the way to Bliss.
This is my home, Rafe, and nothing and no one is going to get me to leave it.” She stepped down the stairs and nodded at Cam before she walked out.
Cam turned as if to go after her. Rafe raced to stop him.
“We can’t just let her go,” Cam complained.
“She isn’t going anywhere.” Rafe understood Cam’s urgency.
Now that he was close to her again, the idea of letting her out of his sight rankled. “I have it on the highest authority that this is her home.” Cam smiled, his face opening in a way Rafe hadn’t seen in a very long time. It made him look years younger. “Well, you’ve got to admit, it is kind of cool.”
“I don’t have to admit anything.”
Cam slapped him on the back. He didn’t seem at all upset with his too-tight T-shirt or the woman who spoke through interpretive dance.
“Come on, it’s gorgeous. It makes me miss Arkansas. Hell, I never thought I’d miss Arkansas, but the mountains here are beautiful. And the air is amazing.”
Rafe frowned. “The air is air, Cam.”
“Nah, it’s different in the mountains. It’s cleaner.” Cam turned and stared after Laura. She almost walked out the door and then seemed to remember that she had left something behind. Her fiancé.
She awkwardly returned to Wolf Meyer’s side. “What is she doing with that asshole? I don’t buy the whole ‘we’re getting married’ thing.
She hasn’t got a ring on. She doesn’t look comfortable when he touches her. And did it seem to you like everyone was a little surprised when they talked to her?”
Rafe hadn’t missed the store owner’s slight double take. He was glad that Cam hadn’t missed it either. He might have been out of the BAU for a couple of years, but Cam still knew how to read body language. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I want to take a close look at that guy. He was the only one who didn’t flinch. That makes me interested in him.”
Cam held up his phone. “Already on it. I’ll run a search on the fucker the minute I get decent access. We should have a nice size file on him by the time night falls. I sincerely hope he’s got a record.”
“Well, we can hope.” Rafe started to walk toward the front of the store. He would check out this place Laura wanted to go to tonight, but he wasn’t going to let her shut him out for long. She was in danger. If they had found her, it was a good bet that the Marquis de Sade could find her, too. He wouldn’t underestimate the fucker again.
He’d gotten her once. He wasn’t getting a second shot.
Wolf casually looped an arm around Laura’s waist. He didn’t seem uncomfortable with her at all. If it hadn’t been for that small space she kept between them, Rafe might have bought that they were a happy couple. Rafe was willing to bet that they weren’t sleeping together.
Wolf leaned over to whisper in Laura’s ear, but something caught his eye. He moved fast. One moment he was cuddling up to Laura, and the next he was rushing out the door.
Laura turned to them, a stern look on her face. “Well, now you’ve done it.”
“What?” Rafe asked. He felt like he hadn’t done a damn thing right since the minute he’d stepped off the plane. It was unnerving.
He wasn’t the guy who fucked up. He was cool and smooth. He took care of things. Cam was the guy who unraveled from time to time. It was the way their partnership had worked for years. Cam screwed up, and Rafe smoothed it over.
But Cam had been taking the lead since they crossed over the Bliss County line.
Now he wondered exactly what he’d screwed up this time. Laura stomped out of the store.
“Come on,” Cam said. There was a bounce in his step as he jogged after Laura.
Rafe followed, but with trepidation. He really hoped no one was naked. There was no way he would be able to unsee that. He had really thought a nudist colony would be filled with hot women. Nope.
Middle-aged men. With their dorks hanging out.
Rafe pushed through the door and saw what had Wolf and Laura up in arms. A tall, thin man was walking around Rafe’s rented black SUV, an odd instrument in his hand. It was shaped like a small satellite connected by a wire to a box that beeped like mad.
“Now, you see here, Wolf, it only beeps like that in the presence of extraterrestrial materials.”
“Mel, it beeps like that all the time.” Wolf spoke in a long-suffering tone.
The older man was dressed in a mechanic’s jumpsuit. He had a trucker’s hat on, but there was a glint of thin silver peeking out from the cap. Was that tinfoil?
“Well, of course it does, son. You’re full of all kinds of alien stuff.
Half your DNA is alien,” the man named Mel said with a fond smile.
“It goes off around you and your brother, but you’re a good boy.” Rafe heard Cam snort beside him. It was pretty funny. Wolf Meyer was an enormous, badass-looking man being called a “good boy” by a man half his size.
Laura’s foot tapped against the sidewalk, her pretty face masked in an irritated frown. “Mel, they aren’t aliens. They are worse than aliens.”
“Ain’t nothing worse than aliens, Laura,” Mel argued, running his instrument over the hood of the SUV.
“They’re feds.” The word dropped like a lodestone.
Mel backed up. “Well, hell. That is worse.” Cam covered his mouth, but walked forward. “We’re very sorry to disturb you, sir. We just got in from DC to talk to a former special agent about a very important case.”
Mel’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve given the FBI at least fifty important cases, and they ain’t never called me back. You ain’t with The X-Files are you?”
“The X-Files is a TV show.” Rafe was at a loss.